Revolutionary Organizations and Revolutionaries in Interbellum Poland. A Bibliographical Biographical Study

This bibliographical study, containing over three thousand entries in ten languages and further divided into thirty categories, is a comprehensive and focussed presentation of the revolutionary organizations and the Communist Party of interbellum Poland. The study is based on research covering the period from 1918 to 1990 and contains lists of file materials, bibliographies, documents, catalogues, and book, magazine and newspaper articles, primarily in Polish. In order to maintain a sharp focus, only those titles are included which are closely connected to the topic and not found in other major bibliographical studies. Much of the cited material appeared in Poland from the 1950's to the 1980's. These materials have been compiled from the most disparate sources, including studies by centralized institutions such as the government, The United Polish Workers' Party (UPWP), trade unions, and also by less official and marginal bodies, as well as independent studies. This study also includes special materials designed for the exclusive internal use of the UPWP and unpublished materials such as dissertations and manuscripts.
The division of the materials into thirty categories is intended to facilitate the use of this bibliography in future historical research. The anniversaries section, for example, presents historical perspectives of the UPWP. In one sense, it documents how the UPWP, the self-declared official heir to the prewar communist ideology, perceived its past communist history. The titles within this section focus upon the observations of those who celebrated the communist past in important historical moments. In another sense, the celebration and analyses thereof, at both the specialist and grass roots level, reveal more about the contemporary UPWP itself than of the pre-war communists.
The second part of this study comprises an extensive list of revolutionaries and accompanying bibliographic entries. Again, this has been carried out with the criterion of maintaining a sharp focus, and avoiding superfluous materials. Since about ten percent of the revolutionaries in interbellum Poland are sketched herein, previous assumptions can be tested or new hypotheses may arise on this working political body.